Harman AVR-8000 First Receiver with PRO LOGIC 2

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1/15/01 at 4:28pm

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339 Posts. Joined 11/2000
Location: Seattle, WA, USA
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If you all haven't heard, Harman Kardon introduced its AVR-8000 receiver at CES. It is the first mainstream receiver to offer Dolby Pro Logic 2. It also offers Surround-EX and DTS-ES Discrete. I'll paste a press release below. Off the top, this receiver sounds like a winner, but you look deeper and you see a key problem. The main problem with this receiver is that it only provides 100 watts per channel amplification for FIVE CHANNELS(very similar to Marantz's strategy). If you want the other 2 channels required for Surround EX or DTS-ES Discrete , you have to run it through an amp. Also the 100 watts per channel is considerably lower than the Denon 5800, B&K 307, and Onkyo 989. It does have Prologic 2 though. So what do you all think of this receiver? I want a complete package, and this might not be it.
http://www.harmankardon.com/reviews/avr%208000-ces.PDF

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1/15/01 at 4:50pm

1,035 Posts. Joined 10/2000
Location: Utah
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It would be smooth machine but I fear the worst with HK as the last several years their products have been plagued with problems. I have a friend who falls for their marketing all the time, for example he boosts about the size of the transformer in his 7000 being bigger than any reciever he's seen and most amplifiers. What I can't tell him is that the casing over it is probably oversized as it is only a 500 VA transformer, most mi-fi decent amps will have twice that. Also the size of the caps which are 22,000 each for a total of 44,000 of filter capacitance. Fine but not great and certainly not enough for the + or - 75 amp peak for any sustained time. Amps that claim to have a 30 amp peak have way better supplies than that and can drive 4 ohms load fine.

I do think they sound good but are scarey. Over 20 percent failure rate on the last years models.

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Gifford Largey
AudioVision Systems

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